…but somewhere on the first page of Flickr’s “Seattle Invitationals 2011 Pool” you can find a shot of me in my best oversize thrift store stage suit.

As a lifelong Seattle World’s Fair nerd, you know I love geeky pictorial presentations about the wonderful world that awaited us in the 21st Century. Today I have some thing different. The nostalgia site SquareAmerica.com has slides from an IBM business-to-business promo presentation about the near future of business computing, in 1975.

Note the date. This is the exact final year in which big mainframe computer complexes, and the companies that sold and maintained them, could realistically see themselves as the center of the data processing universe. The first true home computers came along the next year. By 1980, IBM was had authorized a fast-track project to develop the first IBM PC, midwifing MS-DOS along the way.

But in 1975, Big Iron still ruled. And the folk behind that Big Iron knew where the future lay. It lay with connecting mainframes and networking compatible databases.

In a word: ONLINE.

Hey, they were at least right about that part.

There was a bizarre little bake sale in Belltown this past Wednesday. It takes a little explaining.

Real estate mogul Bruce Lorig fired his only African American female employee after eleven years on the job. She sued, claiming racial discrimination and harassment. She joined up with the Seattle Solidarity Network, a local activist group, to publicize her cause.

Lorig countersued her, and sued Seattle Solidarity to prevent the group from publicly criticizing him.

In response, Seattle Solidarity put up flyers claiming Lorig had to really be in bad fiscal shape if he has to go around trying to drum up cash from his own ex-worker. Hence, the snarky “Lorig Aid.”

It was held in front of Lorig’s First Avenue offices. Seattle Solidarity members “sold” donuts and cupcakes and sang a little folk ditty:

So won’t you please help Bruce Lorig

He has fallen on hard times

He has to sue his former secretary

So won’t you spare a dime

An unannounced, unadvertised, spectacular fireworks show took place on the Seattle central waterfront Saturday night. SeattleTimes.com claims the pyrotechnics commemorated Farmers Insurance Group’s 100th anniversary.

If they’d only been able to wait four months, Farmers could have paid for Seattle’s July 4th fireworks, which apparently still don’t have a principal sponsor.

HugeAssCity has posted this lovely image of a construction crew digging a hole near First Avenue South, not far from where the new viaduct-replacing deep bore tunnel’s supposed to go: “It consists of leftover debris from the historic sawmills, along with the remains of the piles that once supported the piers and overwater railroad tracks that were built when the area was still a tidal flat.”

The fireworks show at the Space Needle must have been programmed by a woman this year. Instead of a dramatic countdown leading up to one big bang, we had seven minutes of slow buildup, punctuated by minor climaxes, leading to a long satisfying final spectacle.

Afterwards, walking back, I saw a well dressed woman outside the Fourth and Battery Building with a big carry-on suitcase, changing out of white high heels into black high heels.

Someone placed simple holiday trappings on the unofficial Cobain memorial bench in Viretta Park.

While we all would’ve preferred the Major League Soccer title game to include Sounders FC, the fact that the game took place here anyway (it’s a “neutral site” affair, like the NFL Super Bowl) was still a great cap to a great maiden season for bigtime soccer (or as bigtime as it gets in the US) in Seattle.

The afternoon before the big game, fans played a pickup game of street ball at First and Pike. This was literal street ball, 30-second dash plays in the middle of the intersection during its four-way WALK lights.

And if the Sounders couldn’t get to the MLS Cup, at least it was won by the non-LA, non-superstar squad.

I took a bunch of pictures. Twelve of them, with quasi-philosophical captions, are now up at Seattle PostGlobe.

I hope to create more of these slice-O-life photo pieces for PostGlobe. If you like this, you could consider a donation to that fledgling nonprofit news site.

Spent a couple hours at tonight’s big P-I employee wake at Buckley’s on lower Queen Anne. At least half the staff had drifted in while I was there. Hugs and toasts and loud Blethen-bashing all around.

Seattle’s own Pizzeria Pagliacci has its 30th anniversary today, with 95-cent slices. I had two, at the original location on University Way. (Yes, I’d been there in its opening week.) Both of today’s slices were right out of the oven. They were slick, sloppy, greasy, gooey, and utterly satisfying.

French photographer Eric Tabuchi offers haunting, lonesome images of “Twenty-Six Abandoned Gasoline Stations.”

ICELANDIC WRITER Iris Erlingsdottir, meanwhile, wishes to remind you that merely having a female leader won’t, by itself, save her speculator-trashed country: “Estrogen Will Not Cure Greed and Stupidity.”

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS wants you to “Save the Words.” Simply mouse over the obscure word of your choice (the words will shout out “pick me” and “no, me”), learn its definition, and promise to use it in daily speech.